There’s still time to lower our voices, choose our words and stop talking long enough to listen to our neighbours

It might be going a tad far to say overstatement is killing our democracy. Hyperbole in politics has been around since the world’s second oldest profession followed the world’s oldest profession into existence. U.S. President Donald Trump is hardly the first to have gained high office through gifted manipulation of the fibber’s foghorn. Yet we…

From Abraham Lincoln to Martin Luther King to Donald Trump, America offers examples – good and bad – of the power of language

Language is a powerful tool for shaping a society's values. The manner in which a leader uses language can reset the moral compass of a nation. And it can influence, for better or worse, the behaviour of its citizenry. While public discourse in Canada isn’t perfect, it’s reasonably civil. Canadian politicians, though sometimes outspoken and critical…

Students of the snowflake generation feel empowered to videotape, confront and swarm professors with whom they disagree

I must confess to a crime. Many years ago, when I was still in my 20s, I was enjoying a late-night non-alcoholic beverage with an old friend from my high school days. Our talk turned to the teachers in our adolescence, some of whom we revered, some of whom we despised. The memory of one…

It’s difficult to predict where the white privilege debate will go in the coming years but it may involve a collision with our society’s most basic rules

A bold debate called white privilege is growing day by day at Canadian universities. It’s also showing up in neighbourhood schools. It’s sometimes a fierce topic and, more than occasionally, white privilege speeches have not been moderate. For example in March 2018, Trent University hosted a speech event entitled “It’s OK to be against whiteness.”…